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ORISKANY 



6th august, 1777 



THE DECISIVE COLLISION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



Maj.-Gen. J. WATTS de PEYSTER 



One " among those /cw battles [like the mere Caiztwnade of Vahny^ 1792], oj" which 
a contrary event would have essentially varied the dra^na of the ivorld in alt its su6- 
seguent scenes.'' Among Creasy' s XI'. Decisive' Bottles from Marathon to Waterloo., 
Saratoga ranks as XI II . Saratoga, howd'er. was a series of collisions : but the tide 
actually tUriied at Oriskafiy, in fcivor of the Colonies and J'rccdom. 



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ORISKANY 

The turning point of the Burgoyne Campaign and of the American 
Revolution was the battle of Oriskany on the 6th of August, 1-777. It 
was also the Thermopylae of America — the self-sacrifice of honest yeo- 
men, willing to devote themselves, like Curtii, for the salvation of what 
they deemed right and honest. To this immolation of the male popula- 
tion of one of the richest original settlements of the State of New York 
the Thirteen Colonies owe their eventual success, and if Independence 
can be credited to any one action, the date of this is that of Oriskany, 
6th August, 1777. 

The British Campaign of 1777 was not a single or simple, but a com- 
bined operation. To Albany as a common objective tended the advance 
of Burgoyne from the north with an army something near 10,000 strong; 
the transportation of Howe from the south with 17,000 to 20,000 effect- 
ives, soldiers and sailors, and St. Leger from the west with a column of 
675 regulars and provincials — whites, and 700 to 900 auxiliaries — Indi- 
ans and mixed breeds. To St. Leger in reality the most important part 
was assigned. This was the opinion of the British General Clinton and 
also of the American Major-General Nathaniel Greene, both excellent 
judges of strategy. St. Leger should have had at least two thousand 
good white troops, whereas under him was a force, not only the weak- 
est in quality and personnel, but the most inadequately supplied with 
artillery and material of all kinds. 

Burgoyne ascended Champlain, bridged, corduroyed and cle' 
twenty-one miles between this lake and the Hudson, and watcre<J'Ms 
horses in this river on the 28th July. About this date St. ^ Jger's 
advance appeared before Fort Stanwix, on the site of thf [ resf.it Rome, 
on the portage between the head waters of the Mohr ., .lich found 
their way into the Atlantic through the Hudson, and tiie ucad waters of 
the streams which unite with the ocean through the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence. 

Almost simultaneously the absolutely necessary repairs of Fort Stan- 
wix were completed, its magazines filled, its garrison augmented to 950 
under Colonel Gansevoort and Lieutenant-Colonels Willet and Mellon, 
and the investment initiated by the advanced guard of the British. On 
the 3d of August St. Leger was up and the siege proper began. From 
Montreal he had ascended the St. Lawrence, crossed Lake Ontario to 



2 ORISKANY 

Fort OswcE^o, progressed up the Onondago River, lengthwise and east- 
ward through Oneida Lake, and up Wood Creek, its main feeder. Sixty 
picked marksmen under Major Watts, of Sir John Johnson's Battahon of 
Refugees from the Mohawk, known as the " Royal Greens," prece 
St. Leger's march, most beautifully arranged, and cleared the way. 

Amid all the mistakes and inexplicable blunders of this campaig 
the greatest was sending " local Brigadier-General" St. Legcr with on' 
675 whites to besiege a regular work, held by 950 good troops, for the 
Indians counted as nothing in such an undertaking. Besides this, St. 
Leger had only a few light pieces, barely sufficient to harrass, and incf-" 
ficient to breach or destroy. Still the Burgoyne scare was upon the 
colony, and nothing as yet had been done to dissipate it, to restore con- 
fidence, or to demonstrate how baseless was the panic. 

Justly estimating the importance of relieving Fort Stanwix, Nicholas 
Harkheimer, a Major-General of Militia, one of God's nobility, a brave 
man, although not much of a soldier, summoned together the males 
of the Mohawk Valley capable of bearing arms at Fort Daytoi on 
the German Flats, now bearing his name, Harkheimer. He had 
remained "true to the colony, although his own brother, many rla 
tions, connections, and former friends were in the opposite c; p 
The militia of the Mohawk rendezvoused at Fort Dayton on he 
very day (3d August) that St. Leger actually began -the sieg. of 
Fort Stanwix. The evening of the 5th he was at " The Mills," a he 
mouth of Oriskany Creek, some 7 to 9 miles from Fort Stanwix, ai in 
communication with the garrison, which was to make a sortie in . >m- 
bination with his attack. How many men Harkheimer had is a mooted 
point. General history estimates his force at 800. Stedman, a veracious 
and unprejudiced historian, says 1,000. It is unquestionable that Hark- 
heimer had Indians with him belonging to the Oneida " House " or tribe 
of the " Six Nations," but how many is very dubious, although it is p x'- 
fectly certain that they were of little account. This tribe had beer de- 
tached from the British interest by Schuyler, and while they accom- 
plished little for the Americans, they brought down ruin upon themselves 
b>' their defection from their ties of centuries. After the impending 
battle the other Five Nations swooped down upon them and cleaned 
them out generally. 

Early on the morning of the 6th August, Harkheimer got in mc 
and into an altercation with his four Colonels and other subordii 
He wanted to display some soldierly caution, and send out scou 
reconnoitre and feel the way through the woods. For this his offi x 



ORISKANY 

with the effrontery of ignorance and the audacity of militiamen, styled 
him a " Tory," or a traitor and a " coward." The bickering lasted for 
hours, until Harkheimer, worn out with the persistency of the babblers, 
gave the order to "march on." 

Now comes the question where were his Oneida Indians ? These 
traitors to a confederacy of " ages of glory " must have been emascu- 
lated by the dread of meeting their brethren whom they had abandoned, 
clung close to the main body, and forgot their usual cunning and wood- 
craft. 

Meanwhile General St. Leger was perfectly well aware that Hark- 
heimer was on his way to the assistance of Colonel Gansevoort in Fort 
Stanwix, and he determined to set a trap for him. He detached his sec- 
ond in command, '^ local" Major-General, or Colonel, Sir John Johnson 
and the latter's immediate lieutenant, Major Stephen Watts, with about 
80 white Provincials, or " Rangers " and refugees, or " Royal Greens," 
with Butler and Brant {Thayendanegd) and his Indians. These established 
an ambush about two miles west of Oriskany — just such as under de Beau- 
geu and Langlade destroyed Braddock in 1755, and again under the same 
Langlade, had he been listened to, would have ruined Wolfe by destroy- 
ing his forces on the Montmorency, below Quebec, in 1759. Harkheimer 
had to cross a deep, crooked ravine, with a marshy bottom and its rivu 
let, drained, traversed and spanned by a causeway and bridge of logs. 
Sir John completely enveloped this spot with marksmen, leaving an 
inlet for the Americans to enter and no outlet by which to escape. 
Moreover he placed his best troops — whites — on the road westward, to 
bar all access to the fort. 

No plans were ever more judicious, either for a battue of game or 
ambuscade for troops. Harkheimer's column, without scouts or flankers, 
plunged into the ravine and had partially climbed the opposite crest and 
attained the plateau, when, with his wagon train huddled together in 
the bottom, the environing forest and dense underwood was alive with 
enemies and ahght with the blaze of muskets and rifles, succeeded by 
yells and war whoops, just as the shattering lightning is almost simul- 
taneous with the terrifying thunder. ^ 

Fortunately for the Americans, Brant or Butler gave the signal to 
close in upon them a. few moments too soon, so that Harkheimer's rear 
guard was shut out of the trap instead of in, and thus had a chance to 
fly. They ran, but in many cases were outrun by the Indians, and suf- 
fered almost if not as severely as their comrades whom they had aban- 
doned. Then a slaughter ensued, such as never has occurred upon this 



4 ORISKANY 

continent, and if the Americans had not displa^-ed heroic bravery they 
would have been exterminated at once. Most likely they would have 
been so eventually, had not Heaven interposed at the crisis and let down 
a deluge of rain, which stopped the slaughter, since in the day of flint 
locks firing amid torrents of rain was an impossibility. This gave the 
Americans a breathing spell and time to recover their senses. Almost 
at the first volley Harkheimer was desperately wounded in the leg by a 
shot, which likewise killed his horse. He caused his saddle to be placed 
at the foot of a beech tree, and there sitting upon it and propped against 
the trunk, he lit his pipe, and while quietly smoking continued to give 
orders and make dispositions which saved all th ^t escaped. His orders 
on this occasion were almost the germ of the best subsequent rifle tac- 
tics. He behaved like a perfect hero and perished a martyr to Liberty, 
for he died in his own home at Danube, two miles below Little Falls, 
ten days afterwards (i6th August), of a bungling amputation and subse- 
quent ignorant treatment. 

When the shower was about over Sir John Johnson seeing th^t the 
Indians were flinching and giving way, sent back to camp for ; uiali 
reinforcement of his " Royal Greens," or else St. Leger sent thera f end 
the matter more speedily. These, although they disguised them-c .es 
like Mohawk valley militia, were recognized by the Americans as broth- 
ers, relatives, connections or neighbors, whom Harkheimer's followers 
had driven orassisted in driving into exile and poverty. These ' " '^ 
were certainly coming back to simply regain what they had 
doubtless to punish if victorious. At once to the fury of battle was 
added the bitterness of hate, spite and mutual vengeance. If the prev- 
ious fighting had been murderous, the subsequent was horrible. Fl-^ 
arms, as a rule, were thrown aside; the two forces mingle 
grasped each other by the clothes, beards and hair, slashed and abbci 
with their hunting knives and were found dead in pairs, locke ■ 1 in th. 
embrace of hate and death. 

There is no doubt but that Sir John Johnson commanded the Liiuah at 
Oriskany. One original writer alone has questioned the fact, wherea< ail 
the other historians agree to the contrary. The reports of St. Leger es- 
tablishes the fact of his presence and praise his able dispositions for 
the fight. Moreover, family tradition and various contemporari- pub- 
lications corroborate it. His brother-in-law. Major Stephen Watts, 
of New York city, almost wounded to death, appears to have been 
second in command, certainly of the whites, and in the bloodiest, closest 
fighting. The latter, like Harkheimer, lost his leg in this action, but 



ORISKANY - 

unlike him, under far more disadvantageous circumstances, preserved 
his life. Without attempting to develope the completeness of this fratri- 
cidal butchery, curious to relate, Harkheimer's brother was not only a 
sort of Quartermaster to St. Leger, but especially charged with the super- 
vision of the Indian auxiliaries, who were the cause of the General's death 
and the slaughter of so many of their common kinsmen, connections, 
friends and neighbors. 

All the Revolutionary battles on New York soil were more or less 
family collisions, and realized the boast which Shakespeare, in the closing 
lines of his tragedy of King John, puts in the mouth of the valiant bas- 
tard Faulconbridge . 

" This England [New York] never did (nor never shall). 
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
But when it first did help to wound itself. 
******** 

Come the three corners of the world in arms, 

And we shall shock them : Nought shall make us rue. 

If England [New York] to itself do rest but true." 

This fratricidal butchery crazed even the Indians. It overpassed 
their own venomous ferocity. They lost their heads, or went mad, like 
wild animals at the sight and smell of blood. They came to the conclu- 
sion that the white men had lured them into this very hell of fire and 
slaughter to exterminate them. The arena of battle became a maelstrom 
ot bloodshed, and the Indians tomahawked, stabbed and slew friend and 
foe alike, and in the wild whirl and cataclysm of passions more power- 
ful than their own, suffered a loss which appalled even the fell instincts of 
the savage. 

As an American, and especially as a Knickerbocker, the historian 
cannot but rejoice in the heroism exhibited by the people of his State 
and of kindred blood, and the opportunity of demonstrating it ; but as 
a chronicler of events there is no evading the concurrent testimony of 
facts of Kapp's History of his People—/, e., the Dutch and German set- 
tlers of the Mohawk Valley, and of St. Leger's Report. All of these 
concur in their evidence, dii-ect and circumstantial, that Harkheimer's 
little army suffered a disastrous tactical defeat. That this did not 
remain a defeat, and was transmuted into an eventual success, was due 
to the common-sense generalship of Harkheimer. According to his plan, 
the advance and attack of his column of Mohawk Valley men was to be 
a combined movement, based upon or involving a simultaneous sortie 
from Fort Stanwix. This sortie was not made in time to save Harkhei- 



5 ORISKANY 

raer's life or the lives and serious casualties of and to about a half or 
two-thirds of his command. Nothing- absolutely preserved the surviv- 
ors of Harkheimer's column but the direct interposition of a beneficent 
Providence in letting down at the crisis the deluging " shower of bless- 
ing." When and not till the flood began to abate did Willett take 
advantage of the storm to make his sortie and attack that portion of St. 
Leger's lines of investment, which had been denuded of their defenders 
to cooperate with the Indians in the ambush set for Harkheimer. The 
siege works or lines of investment, to apply a serious term to very tri- 
fling imitations, were very incomplete. In real military parlance, to 
style them lines of investment is humbug. St. Leger's three batteries 
mounted the first, three light guns ; the second, four diminutive mortars ; 
the third, three more light guns, whereas there were fourteen pieces of 
artillery mounted in the fort. The redoubts to cover the British bat- 
teries, St. Leger's line of approaches and his encampment, were ail on 
the north side of the fort. These were occupied by between four hun- 
dred and fifty to five hundred regulars and Provincials. Sir John John- 
son's works, held by from 130 to 175 Loyalist troops, were to the south- 
ward. It was against these last, almost entirely stripped of their 
defenders, that Willett made his sortie and attack. St. Leger's works 
and those of Sir John Johnson were widely separated and independent 
of each other, and the intervening spaces or intervals, to make the cir- 
cuit of the investment apparently complete, was held or rather patrolled 
by the Indians. These last during the sortie were away assaulting Hark- 
heimer. Consequently Willett's sortie, however successful in its results 
as to material captured and as a diversion, was utterly devoid of peril. 
That he had time to plunder Sir John Johnson's camp and three times 
send out wagons, load them and send them back into the post without 
the loss of a man, is unanswerable proof that he met with no opposition. 
He surprised and captured a small squad of prisoners — five, an officer 
(commissioned or non-commissioned) and four privates — and saw, a few 
dead Indians and whites, but it does not appear whether they had been 
killed by the fire from the fort or in the attack. All the merit that 
inures to his sortie, militarily considered, is the fact that to save what- 
ever material Willett did not have time to remove, Sir John Johnson had 
to extricate and hurry back his " Royal Greens " from the battle-ground 
of Oriskany, four to five and a half miles away farther to the south- 
ward, leaving the completion of the bloody work to the Indians. These, 
however, had already got their fill of fighting, and thus it was alone that 
the remnants of Harkheimer's column were left in possession of the field, 



ORISKANY „ 

soaked with their blood and covered with their dead and their wounded. 
Therefore, all the glory of Oriskany belongs to the men of the Mohawk 
Valley, who, notwithstanding they were completely entrapped, defended 
themselves with so much heroism for five or six hours, and displayed so 
much cool courage, that they were able to extricate even a remnant from 
the slaughter-pit. That Willett captured '* five British standards," or 
five British stand of colors, cannot be possible ; in fact, to a soldier this 
claim seems nonsense. They may have been camp colors or markers. The 
regimental colors are not entrusted to detachments from regiments. 
The " Royal Greens " may have had a color, a single flag, although this 
is doubtful, because at most they constituted a weak battalion. The 
colors of the Eighth or King's Regiment of Foot were certainly left at 
headquarters, likewise those of the Thirty-fourth. The same remark 
applies to the Hanau Chasseurs. As still further incontrovertible proof, 
the camp of the Regulars was not attacked. The fact is the Ameri- 
can story of Willett *s sortie has an atmosphere of myth about it. St. 
Leger's report to Burgoyne and likewise to Carleton — the latter the 
most circumstantial — in their very straight-forward simplicity of Ian- 
gauge present the most convincing evidence of truthfulness. St. Leger 
writes to Carleton : 

" At this time [when Harkheimer drew near] I had not 250 of the King's troops in camp, the 
various and extensive operations I was under an absolute necessity of entering into, having 
employed the rest ; and therefore [I] could not send above 80 white men, rangers and troops 
Included, with the whole corps of Indians. 

"SiVi. ]om>i '^OK-mon put himself at the head 0/ this party. * * * * 

" In relation to the victory [over Harkheimer] it was equally complete as if the whole had 
•alien ; nay, more so, as the 200 who escaped only served to spread the panic wider. But it 
vas not so with the Indians ; their loss was great. I must be understood, Indian comptitation, 
aeing only about 30 killed and wounded, and in that number some of their favorite chiefs and 
;onfidenlial warriors were slain. * ^ * * * as I suspected the enemy [Wil- 

ett] made a sally with 250 7nen towards Lieut. Bird's post, to facilitate the entrance of the 
■elieving corps, or bring on a general engagement with every advantage they could wish. * * 

" Immediately upon the departure of Captain HoYES I learned that Lieut. Bird, misled by the 
nformalion of a cowardly Indian that SiR JoHN was prest, had quitted his post to march to his 
.ssistance ; I marched the detachment of the King's Regiment in support of Captain Hoyes, by 
. road in sight of the garrison, which with executive fire from his party immediately drove the enemy 
nto the fort without any further advantage than frightening some squaws and pilfering the packs of 
he warriors, which they left behind them." 

It was Harkheimer who knocked all the fight out of the Indians, and 
t was the desertion of the Indians that rendered St. Leger's expedition 
.bortive. 

What is more, honest reader, remember this fact : St. Leger had 
mly 675 Regulars and Provincials besides Indians, and ten light guns 



8 ORISKANY 

and diminutive mortars to besiege a fort well supplied, mounting; fourteen 
guns and garrisoned with 750 at least, and according to most authori- 
ties, 950 troops of the New York line, i. e., to a certain degree regulars. 

Harkheimer(bear the repetition) had knocked all the fighting out oi 
the Indians. Nevertheless, St. Legcr continued to press the siege with 
at most 650 whites against 750 to 950 whites, from the 6th until the 226 
August, and when he broke up and retreated at the news of Arnold's ap- 
proach with a force magnified by rumor, it was more on account of the 
infamous conduct of the Indians than anything else. All the evidence, 
when sifted, justified his remark that the Indians " became more formid- 
able than the enemy we had to expect." By enemy he meant Arnold's 
column hastening its march against him and the garrison in his immedi- 
ate front, and yet neither St Leger nor Burgoyne under-estimated the 
American troops — not even the militia. 

The gist of all this and the moral of this story concentrates in one 
fact : — it was not the defense of Fort Stanwix but the heroism of Hark- 
heimer's militia that saved the IMohawk Valley, and constitutes Oriskan); 
the Thermopylae of the American Revolution, the crisis and turning 
point against the British of the Burgoyne campaign, and the " Decisive 
Conflict " of America's seven years war for Independence. 

J. WATTS DE PEYSTER 



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